Fifteen years after his brilliant Berlin Noir trilogy of crime novels set in Nazi-era Germany (March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem), Philip Kerr returned in 2006 with the further adventures of his hardboiled investigator Bernhard Gunther. In this sixth outing, set in 1954, Bernie has resurfaced in Havana. Life is relatively peaceful, but the world-weary ex-cop discovers that he cannot outrun his past when he collides with an old lover—and a vicious killer—from his life in Berlin 20 years before. Kerr's story moves between the flamboyant corruption of Batista's Cuba and the paranoia of Nazi Germany during the buildup to the 1936 Olympiad.

"Favorably compared to the World War II espionage novels of Alan Furst (The Foreign Correspondent, The Spies of Warsaw) and the work of hard-boiled legends Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, Philip Kerr reprises the Bernie Gunther saga with true fidelity to his detective's noir roots. The Berlin Noir novels, a trilogy published nearly 20 years ago, are known in crime circles but woefully neglected by mainstream readers. With If the Dead Rise Not ... Kerr continues to develop Gunther's character in one of the great historical crime series."—Bookmarks Magazine